



The Place of 
Values 



REV. G. R. MONTGOMERY, Ph. D. 



The Place of Values 



AN ESSAY IN 

K1MSTEMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS 



BY 

Rev. George R. Montgomery, Ph. D. 

Author of "Talking English." 



.» . • • 



MCMIII 
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The Place of Values 




INTRODUCTION, 




HE two words worth and truth seem to be 
independent variables. Although we be- 
lieve them to be related in some way, they 
are not, at least, synonymous in our minds. 
Our question is : What relation or articu- 
lation is there between values and truth? 
Hence we have our subject, The Place of Values. By way 
of a general introduction we shall inquire why the sub- 
ject of values has been neglected in philosophy and why 
it is important. Then, as a historical introduction, we 
shall briefly glance at attempts to supplement intellectu- 
alism, finding them, I think, to be really attempts to do 
justice to the worth side of life. Our main question we 
will approach from the epistemological standpoint, ask- 
ing what are the elements in consciousness and what is 
the significance of the analysis into subject and object. 
As an irreducible element in consciousness — in the con- 
tent of the word subject where the antithesis subject- 
object is used — and in the counterpart to the abstract re- 
lationships which are best represented by the word truth, 
we shall find, I believe, the place of values. 

Why Values Have Been Neglected. 

The exclusion of values from the domain of truth was 
achieved only after a long struggle. Arguments of ex- 
pediency and utility had so hampered the quest of truth 
and truth was so much more effective when free from them 
that even ethics, which the Greeks had founded on the 



conception of the good (Prof. Ladd's Phil, of Conduct, 
Page 34) sought its basis in something Less variable than 
values and developed into a system of truths. In fact 
truth seemed to offer itself as the last tope of minds 
looking for an authority. So variable an element as 
value could contribute nothing to those satisfied with 
absoluteness alone, and when truth seemed able to inter- 
pret the whole of experience in its own terms it was sup- 
posed that values also would some day be expressible in 
terms of truth. Furthermore the dictum tie gustibus non 
disputandum est precluded^ any attempt to treat values 
scientifically. Political Economy, whose investigations 
lie largely in the realm of values, as quickly as possible 
reduced values to mere numbers, to the dollars and cents 
which the buyer is willing to pay (Commercial theory of 
values) or to the amount of toil and sacrifice which a 
thing has cost the seller (Socialist theory. Pres Hadley, 
Economics, Page 91). 

Theology used to furnish an opportunity for the discus- 
sion of values. But Theology has been pushed to the 
wall and Philosophy Of Religion, which has been substi- 
tuted for it, xooints out origins and relations and unities 
rather than values. 

The net result is that values have been painstakingly 
eliminated from all sciences and have not come to their 
own anywhere else. 

Why a Treatment of Values is Important. 

It is important 

First, because although truth for truth's sake is a motto 
which we w^ould not reject for a moment, there is this 
value element in our life, the most intense element, the 
most personal. It includes all that men most desire, 
and it cries for recognition and justification ; or else, if 
it be a fiction and a fallacy, then an entire removal be- 
cause it disturbs and perverts the recognition of truth. 
Men fight against determinism because the value of their 
living is menaced. Men opposed evolution because it 

4 



seemed to take away fche value in their existence. We 
must either justify or eliminate the sense of values. 
Second, It is very well for th< v truth-seeker to be calm 

and patient and not to worry even should another thous- 
and years pass before the value of existence be worked 
out. Men and women, however, have but a few years to 
live. To-day they must act, and the question of ultimate 
values demands immediate treatment. It cannot be post- 
poned. Thinkers have neglected to link our every day 
interests to their systems. Our conduct will not wait on 
their success in attaining reality; 

Third, The pessimistic conclusions of some of our most 
influential thinkers, even though we feel the morbidity 
of their views, are an additional incentive to us to discuss 
values and their place in our thinking; 
Fourth, Perhaps in this element of values which plays 
the leading part in our life, we shall find the clue to some 
of our philosophical and psychological difficulties. 

Professor Ladd does not at all overstate the case when 
he says: (Phil, of Conduct, Page 195.) "The reconcil- 
iation of man's scientific standards and his judgments of 
that which has value, is the imperative and most difficult 
problem of this age beyond all other ages." In itself the 
very fact that philosophy has found no place for values, 
justifies the imperative demand for their treatment. 

SUPPLEMENTS TO INTELLECTUALISM. 
Religion as a Supplement. 

We take up the supplements to intellectualism as a 
historical introduction to our subject because we regard 
them as indirect recognitions of the importance and the 
place of values. Among the various supplements to in- 
tellectualism we find that religion has always furnished 
the principal practical supplement. Its contents are made 
up of what people desire and of that which appeals to 
people. Its sincerest devotees are little affected by ver- 
dicts of intellectualism. It is the scandal to scientific 
minds that exhorters and evangelists make no appeal to 

5 



logic in winning adherents and even contemn speculation 
as distracting the attention from that which is more 
important. 

In the Christian religion for instance, for the practical 
propagation of the "Gospel," the chief emphasis has 
been laid on such things as the sense of sin, and the at- 
tractive power of Christ, things which appeal to the sense 
of worth. It is in the wake of the movement and not 
ahead of it that there has arisen the discussion as to the 
personality of Christ and the logical meaning of the 
atonement. The basis of religion was never in intellect- 
ualism, although the latter is always very ready to take 
it up and explain what its basis is. Natural Theology 
tried to rebase it on reasoning. Modern Philosophy of 
Religion where it does not tread in the path of Natural 
Theology studies it as a phenomenon among other phe- 
nomena to be accounted for. Neither Natural Theology 
nor the Philosophy of Religion have propagated religion. 

Faith as a Supplement. 

These supplementary movements have always gone 
along parallel with intellectualism, in different periods 
taking on different names. One which has had the widest 
range centers in the word faith. Sometimes the word has 
set the heart with its affections over against the mind with 
its knowledge. This has been derisively called the Pec- 
toral Theology or theology of the breast. Sometimes inner 
experience has been set over against outer experience, in- 
sights and intuitions over against reasoning. For in- 
stance Otto Pfleiderer, recognized as the leading German 
follower of Hegel, says : "Religion does not attempt to 
explain the world theoretically, but it tries to set right 
the relation to the world of the feeling and willing ego or 
the heart." (Relig. Phil. 2-651). 

Sometimes faith is a peculiar sense of dependence on 
the world-ruling might "in whose hand lies our weal and 
woe." We may call attention to the fact that in such 
statements the important element is not in the "depend- 
ence" but in the words "weal and woe." 

6 



Some asserl that faith is a special revelation or a spec 
ial insight vouchsafed to the elect. Some find a basis for 
faith in authority, whether the authority of the Vicar of 
God, or the authority of the church or that of common 
experience. Some call faith an ''attitude of the mind" 
favorable to the apprehension of truth, or a mystic knowl- 
edge or intimation of the supernatural. Faith is often 
openly named ""belief without reason or against reason,"' 
or else reason is discredited in the hope that this some- 
thing else, namely faith, will advance in credit. Some- 
times it is shown that all knowledge has "faith ele- 
ments" and therefore the particular faith, which is being 
advocated, is true ! A recent popular form of the faith 
doctrine has been found in James' "Will to Believe," 
while in Theological circles Luther's associating faith 
with that which man clings to and trusts to is finding- 
wide acceptance. 

Jowett, who may be taken as representing the Theol- 
ogy of Feeling, says: " Logical categories may give as 
false a notion of the divine nature in our age as graven 
images did in the age of the Patriarchs." In every use 
of the word faith there is an attempt to rill up a void left 
by truth. 

Practical Philosophy. 

Of a less distinctly religious character is the distinc- 
tion between Practical and Theoretical Philosophy. Kant 
made the Practical Philosophy a code of conduct. In 
recent times there has been quite a tendency to find it as 
a system of worths. Wundt says in his Einleitung, 
(Page 7) : "When we ask for the object of Philosophy, 
we lind two objects ; one, theoretical, purely intellectual, 
which has its roots in the struggle of our reason for a 
unity and harmony in knowledge; and the other, practi- 
cal, which belongs to the feeling side (Gemiithsseite) of 
our soul life and seeks for a world-view which shall sat- 
isfy our subjective desires." We may by anticipation 
mention the inherent contradiction in Wundt' s system 
found in the fact that he reduces Practical Philosophy to 

7 



Theoretical (Einleitnng, Page 38) bu1 in epistemology he 

reduces the object to the subject. 

One phase of the Practical Philosophy is to emphasize 
"what ought to be" as against ''what is." Sidgwick, 

for instance, ("Phil., its Scope and Relations," Page 94) 
sets off, first the ethico-political system of what ought to 
be, and over against this he puts the science, or the posi 
tive system of what is. He defines Theology as con- 
cerned with showing the relation between the two. 

The Spirit-Sciences. 

In certain philosoxmical circles, especially in Germany, 
the whole of the old contention in behalf of Theology, 
of faith, and of the Practical Philosophy, is gathered 
together under the term " Spirit Sciences " which is set 
over against "Nature Sciences." The names usually as- 
sociated with this movement are those of Rickert, who 
preferred the phrase culture-sciences, Windelband, Dil- 
they, Wundt, and Miinsterberg. Dilthey says in his 
Einl. in die G-eistes-wissenschaften, Page 33: "The 
Spirit sciences are made up of three classes of proposi- 
tions — fact, theorem, and value-judgment. From the 
first root in consciousness, however, up to the highest 
point, is the nexus of value judgments and imperatives 
independent from the first two classes of fact and uni- 
formity. " 

Windelband seems to have been led to make this dis- 
tinction through a revolt against the carrying of nature 
science methods over iuto history. When history is read 
in terms of cause-effect relations, it becomes mechanical 
and the meaning of events is either removed or postponed 
indefinitely. Carlyle's method of setting forth each 
event and man to appeal to us, was felt to be closer to 
experience. As other attempts to supplement intellectu- 
alism may be mentioned the value-judgments of the Rlt- 
schlians, also Ethical Idealism directed against the Neo- 
Hegelians and Ethical Monism directed against the Scien- 
tific Monism. 



The Worth of Life. 

These references to supplements to intellectnalism arc 
sufficient to establish the fact stated by Wundt in his 
Einleitung that "along with the conception of Philoso- 
phy as a theoretic discipline there have ever been concep- 
tions of it as Griiterlehre — both elements have been recog- 
nized in the great systems." 

Out of the great mass of experience we find separating 
two points of view, one formal, with constantly increas- 
ing success in shaking itself free from values, the other 
practical realizing ever more and more that the question 
of worths and values is its nucleus. The ultimate type of 
the former is the purely formal science of mathematics 
where two plus two equals four, no matter whether the 
two stands for atoms, or men, or dollars. Its goal is to 
express experience, as far as possible in these formal 
terms. Mechanics and physics are to be reduced as far 
as possible to mathematical terms, chemistry to mechan- 
ics ; biology and physiology to chemistry ; and psychol- 
ogy to physiology, and thus ultimately to mathematics. 

Along with this very legitimate ambition is the desire 
to do justice to the worth in life and all the various at- 
tempts to supplement intellectualism, each using a differ- 
ent vocabulary, have their root and their justification in 
their recognition of values. It is in the extent that they 
attain this recognition without doing violence to the first 
tendency, that they obtain our sympathy and that they 
have an influence. 

A careful examination of these supplements will, I 
think, substantiate this Jast statement. Though they 
seem so divergent in their aims and though what they 
actually attain seems often so far removed from the idea 
of worths yet worths is their main motive, and when they 
swing away from that motive interest in them is gone. 

As illustrating such loss of interest, contrast for in- 
stance the difference in the force of the appeal made to 
men by Philosophy's God and the Christ of Christian ty. 
The former, the Absolute, the God who possesses the at 

9 



tribute's of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence 
does not stir any one who is not already under religious 
impulse derived elsewhere. Christianity lias had to de- 
pend on the worth for society of the personality of Christ 
for its propagation and not on the arguments of Theism. 
Christ has been received as a worth, Philosophy's God as 
a truth. In contrasting the influence of the two, as rep 
resenting worth and truth, it is enlightening to note fur- 
ther that not a single attribute of the God of Philosophy 
is to be found in Christ and not one of Christ's attributes 
is to be found in Philosophy's God. No wonder that it 
is difficult for a "Natural Theologian" to say that Christ 
was the Son of God. For he was not the son of Philos- 
ophy's God, but in his life of love he revealed the fact 
that there is something worth while in existence. His 
revelation was of love, of worth and not of power or of 
a cause, or of an absolute, and herein has lain its influ- 
ence. To love your neighbor means to feel the worth of 
your neighbor. To love God means to feel a worth in life 
above your life. To love self means to feel the worth of 
self. Love is a sufficient characterization of God. God 
is love means that God is what is worth while in exist- 
ence. Only out of the idea of worth can be built up his 
personality, as, I think, will. appear later. The worth, 
the value in existence is God. Therefore Christians are 
able to insist that only he has begun to have a right con- 
ception of God who can say that Christ was his son, 
because Christ's life was the life of the highest worth; 
that is, the highest incarnation of worth which we have 
had. The message of Christianity to a pleasure-loving 
age, to an indifferent age, to an age of pessimism, is 
simple but all important : "There is a worth in exist- 
ence, and that worth is to be found in the life and death 
of Christ." 

If before deciding whether there is any worth in exist- 
ence we wait for reasoning to jjrove it, "no worth" will 
be our verdict. Reasoning can only manipulate what has 
already been given it. The syllogism does not add to the 
contents of the major premise. Hence pessimism or no 
worth is the goal of intellectualism. 

10 



Wherever we look, at Religion or Practical Philoso- 
phy or at the Gteistes-wissenschaften, we shall find that 
the worth in life is the distinguishing postulate of the sup- 
plements to intellectualism. Our interest in immortality 

ami the repeated defences of it do not arise out of a de- 
sire to go on living forever like an indestructible atom 
but they are the result of the natural repulsion against 
the loss of value. The proof of immortality does not 
establish the value in our life but the fact of the latter is 
the basis for any expectation of immorality. Again from 
the scientific point of view, we should exult over the suc- 
cess in introducing necessity into the realm of motives. 
In fact, however, we rebel against determinism, and this 
is because it takes away any meaning in our conduct. 

In laying this emphasis on the worth side of experi- 
ence as a counterpart to the truth side, it is not our in- 
tention to enter into the epistemological analysis which 
follows, prejudiced. But it is legitimate, when there are 
such an indefinite number of bases for a classification of 
the facts of consciousness to use, as a hypothesis, the 
clue furnished by a cleavage in the w T hole of experience, 
a cleavage which may perhaps have its foundation in the 
very elements of consciousness. When we take up the 
analysis of consciousness with a previous notion of that 
for which we are looking, there is a risk that we may be 
on the wrong track and that we shall be misled. There 
is, how r ever, w^hen we enter such a maze, the increased 
probability of picking up the right clue when we have an 
idea of what it is. This introduction, therefore, which 
has indicated I hope the deep hold upon us of the world 
of worths, far from vitiating the analysis to w T hich we 
are about to proceed, is the only thing which prevents 
me from feeling presumptuous in pitting the results here 
reached against those of profounder and more experienced 
psychologists. Feeling assured that there is a meaning, a 
worth in existence, and being driven back from trying to 
find this worth in an over- man, or in a future age, or in 
a social organism, to the individual consciousness as 
the ultimate basis for such an assurance, we approached 

11 



the investigation with the certainty of finding a definite 

element there — not so unscientific an approach as some 
might think. I am convinced that no worth in existence 

and no purpose in existence into which the time element 
enters as a constituent part, as, for instance, with the 

evolutionists, has yet been validly based; It is for this 
reason that I would reject the teleologica] argument as 
unable to establish a worth. 

The most pressing problem in Philosophy is to articu- 
late practical Philosophy with theoretical Philosophy, 
worth with truth. This is an epistemological problem, 
if we are permitted to extend the word epistemology to 
include the whole analysis of consciousness. Just as the 
question "what is true?" became the question "what is 
truth?" so the question what is of value has become, 
what is value? Is there value? Consciousness is the 
final court in the former case and must be likewise the 
final court in the latter case, for as we have said if value 
be not postulated in the premise it can never be argued 
into the conclusion. The element of value is as funda- 
mental as the notion of existence. 

THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS. 

Consciousness the Ultimate Point of Departure. 

In every day language experience is spoken of as the 
ultimate point of departure ; we may say, moreover, that 
psychologists are agreed in taking consciousness as the 
ultimate point of departure for experience, consciousness 
and experience being, as I think will be clear later, the 
same thing looked at in different relations. 

There are not wanting great names of philosophers who 
use elements which they do not feel obliged to trace back 
to consciousness. But it seems safe to say that whencever 
the elements of experience, even of will or intuition or 
"Stellungnehmen," may have originated, they are, in 
some way, in consciousness now, and since we cannot talk 
about them except in relation to consciousness our inves- 
tigation must hold to its terminology. 

12 



More difficult to convince than such philosophers arc 
those scientists who attempt to tell what the world was 

before consciousness evolved. To the psychologists the 
argument seems simple: All the terms which the evolu- 
tionist uses heat, weight, pressure, dust, energy — are 
present to the consciousness and have a meaning as terms 
only to consciousness; in and out of conscious experience 
(really a tautological phrase) has been evolved the world 
as each one knows it; even the expression, "unconscious 
thought/' has to be established out of the elements in 
consciousness and though the evolutionist talks confi- 
dently of the evolving consciousness, Ms supposedly in- 
dependent world must be likewise established out of ele- 
ments in consciousness. Perhaps the scientist would 
be more open to persuasion if we should assure him that 
this position does not necessarily sublimate the reality of 
the world in which he is interested. 

The Analysis of Consciousness. 

With the natural analysis of consciousness into differ- 
ent states we are all familiar. From it have come the dif- 
ferent senses, the different qualities, the different feel- 
ings, the different emotions, the different desires, etc. It 
is very valuable for Psychology. In epistemology, how- 
ever, we would try to go a little further and analyze each 
state. This will perhaps restore to consciousness that 
unity which the analysis into states seems to take away. 

The popular analysis into intellect, sensibility and will, 
when not understood as an ontological rending asunder, 
is an attempt more in our direction. It has proved very 
helpful and we ought not to let go of it entirely. It 
throws some light but not enough, and in itself has led 
to confusion, because intellection contains both sensi- 
bility and will, and so each in turn contains the other 
two. 

For a first step there seems to be a way less accidental, 
viz. : to separate out one element if possible and put pro- 
visionally what is left under a second name. 

13 



Subject and Object. 

Such terms will contain just as much meaning as we 
put into them. We will put into them that meaning 
which gives comprehensibility to the greatest number of 
phenomena. The importance of the terms and of the 
analysis will depend on our success in finding a basis of 
differentiation which will do justice to the greatest num- 
ber of facts. Therefore we might set off X and Y and 
find out what content can be given an X as against a 
content for Y. We have the right, however, as a hypothe- 
sis to take a hint from one of the most striking differ- 
ences which we expect to bring* into line namely the dis- 
tinction between the I and the not-I. That distinction, 
however, may not be a fundamental one and we must still 
be careful to put into the words we may adopt only such 
a content as experience allows us. Epistemology long- 
ago attempted a two-fold analysis and has set over 
against each other the two words subject and object, bor- 
rowed from logic. 

It is well to use these words because each points to the 
other, and if we hold fast to them we shall not be led in- 
to trying to define consciousness as a whole (our point of 
departure) in terms of one of the elements found in it. 
There is no object without a subject and no subject with- 
out an object. The separation accordingly is not onto- 
logical, nor is there any absolute division. Whatever 
elements we may find, there must be a reference in them, 
expressed or implied, to the rest of the elements. 

Any one, therefore, who speaks of unconscious will 
thereby proclaims that he did not obtain his conception 
of will out of the analysis of consciousness; he has di- 
vided the faculties. 

For our reciprocal terms we might have used internal 
and external save that this almost unavoidably leads to 
what Avenarius has called "interjection," or we might 
have used center and circumference, save that technically 
the center is an infinitely small point and when used for 
the subject it becomes difficult to give a content to a van- 

14 



ishing point. We can also see thai if emptied of most 
of their contents save that of reciprocity we mighl have 
used the words antecedent and consequent, of ap and 

down, or numerator and denominator, etc. All these 
possibilities are mentioned to show how colorless must be 
the words subject and object to start with, because many 
of the difficulties in Epistemology have been artificial, 
caused by trying to press an analogy or metaphor. 

Pressing Analogies. 

Ill the use of the words subject and object, for instance, 
the pressing of logical analogies has been a remarkable 
source of confusion. Some going so far as to say that 
the subject can never be investigated, because when ex- 
amined it at once becomes an object and thus loses its 
subjective character. Brentano speaks first of the object 
which is conceived, judged and desired ; second, the act 
of conceiving, judging or desiring ; but the third, the 
subject, is beyond his ken. Bradley also makes the 
predicate or object an adjective : only the subject is real. 
These are forcing of analogies quite as much as is the re- 
ducing of the subject as a center to a vanishing point, or 
the similar picture, where the subject is regarded as the 
small end of a cornucopia, with the object as the large end 
so that attempts to examine the subject are compared to 
the wish of the eye to see itself. 

Some seem to picture the ego as a planet upon which 
the consciousness moves, thinking at first that up and 
down is a fundamental relation in things till a higher 
astronomy resolves the difference into one of direction. 
Now this as an analogy is well enough, but is not suffic- 
ient for the basis of a system. 

In regard to the grammatical analogy mentioned above 
and the assertion that the subject can never be examined 
because it at once becomes the object (in a sentence) it 
should be remembered that it is not the subject alone, as 
they seem to think, which is examining, but the as yet 
undifferentiated subject-object, that is, the present state 
of consciousness which is analyzing a past. If grammar 

15 



prevents the previous subject's being examined so does it 
prevent the present -'object's" pretending to examine. It 
is as possible for the present subject-object to examine 
the previous subject as to examine the previous object. 
Its affirmations about the object are quite as open to 
question as those about the subject. In these and similar 
paralogisms the word subject is used in a metaphysical 
sense and no longer in an epistemological sense. 

Probably our speaking as though the present state ex- 
amined the past introduces an artificial difficulty. A 
state of consciousness is not an object held up to view, 
and the lines we introduce divide up experience as little 
as the equator bothers the earth. Pure experience knows 
no distinction as that between a subject-object first not 
opened up and then cracked open like a nut. Perhaps a 
higher knowledge may show a subject-object in other re- 
lations. For our consciousness, which is the inside of 
the nut, there are only the elements which appear, in 
one respect, as subject and object. We shall deal with 
it according to our light and not press a figure as though 
we could stand outside of consciousness. It will not do 
to let the epistemological subject which is an element in 
consciousness be supplanted by a very different meta- 
physical subject which includes both subject and object. 

The pressing of the grammatical analogy and this view 
of the ego as something standing outside of conscious- 
ness, or a something of which the consciousness is a 
functioning, will come up again when we come to speak 
of those who put the will for the subject. Let it be un- 
derstood that the objection is not to the use of analogies, 
because all description must be in analogies, but the use 
must be justified by experience and the analogy must not 
be used as a proof. 

Reciprocity in Analysis. 

With the clue that apparently the principal fact to be 
accounted for is the distinction between the ego and non- 
ego, we start with thetwo words subject and object which 
have so far merely the element of reciprocity. The figure 

16 



which best represents this reciprocity is that used in 
mathematics when a plane is analyzed into the X and Y 
co-ordinates. 



r e5 






Subject 



This figure shows that there is no experience, or reality, 
or consciousness which does not contain both subject and 
object. Each is a supplement to the other, and it takes 
both to restore the experience, or reality, or conscious- 
ness. Since we expect to take the above diagram as the 
type of our analysis, it may not be out of place to point 
out that it is the type of all analysis. It is misleading 
to picture an analysis as dividing into two independent 
parts. An inseparable element in each part is always its 
relation to the other part. When water is analyzed into 
oxygen and hydrogen an inalienable part of the reality 
of each is its relation to the other, and the same diagram 
must be used to express the reciprocity. An analysis is 
never ontological. 

Oxygen 



4 



*P 



Hydrogen 



The diagram shows the unity, but yet does justice to 
the difference. The diagram does not explain anything. 

2p 17 



It does not solve the problem of like and unlike, or unity 
and plurality, but it gives a picture and makes graspable 
what might otherwise present insurmountable difficulties 
to our thinking. Some of these difficulties which other- 
wise threaten to block the way are bridged over, and we 
are able to proceed with our investigation. 



Intellection 



^ 
^ 



• 



# 



Feeling 



For instance, intellection and feeling are shown to be, 
by experience, independent variables, yet there is no in- 
tellection without feeling and no feeling without intel- 
lection. Now without stopping to war over the question 
as to which is to be reduced to the other we make a pic- 
ture of their identity and difference and are able to go on. 

Artificiality of the Analysis Into Subject and Object 

There have been some criticisms of the analysis into 
subject and object on the ground that it was artificial ; 
that it is not the one which would naturally occur to an 
unpsychological mind. It has been asserted that any 
analysis which claims to be primitive and fundamental 
must be a natural one, one that might be present to a 
very elementary consciousness. We answer that, all clas- 
sifications and categories are hypotheses which survive 
out of the whole of experience after a struggle with com- 
peting hypotheses. They depend for their importance 
and reality on being the result of a wide range of experi- 
ence. Provided that they are applicable to the particu- 
lar cases, the wideness of their applicability enhances 

18 



rather than diminishes their reality. Our analysis into 
subject ami object therefore must account for the ele- 
ments of elementary consciousnesses, but we could not at 
all expect it to occur to them. Truth is organic and not 
inorganic. It grows not by accretion but by evolution. 
We can not lay down a bit of truth like a bit of a 
pyramid and expect to find it in the larger truth. The 
Larger truth though including all the facts may entirely 
exclude the lesser truth. 

VARIOUS CONTENTS FOR SUBJECT AND OBJECT 

For the words subject and object, the content with 
which we start out is reciprocity ; and our clue of ego 
and non-ego we are ready to abandon for a better one as 
soon as the facts require it. The use of the words, how- 
ever, is not new, and it will help us to have in mind the 
different meanings that have been put into them. 

The Spinozistic Philosophy put thought for one and 
extension for the other leading to an insurmountable 
dualism. Kant put for the subject that which gave the 
form and for the object that which gave the content, thus 
requiring a "Ding an sich" on each side. His successors 
sublimated the latter "Ding an sich", the materialists 
the former, the Neo-Kantians both, which was a step in 
the right direction. The Realists tried to resolve the two 
into a higher unity, as, for instance, the Identity Phil- 
osophy or some of the advocates of the Will Philosophy. 

A very modern system which has already been hinted 
at, is that which defines the subject as a Center-factor 
(Zentralglied) and the object as the Reacting-f actor 
(Gegenglied). Compare the picture of our planet moving 
among the other heavenly bodies where each one in turn 
may be regarded as the center of the universe around 
which all the rest move. This position expounded by 
Kulpe("Das Ich und die Aussenwelt." Phil. Studien 
'92) is a development of the Empirio-Critical position and 
in its overcoming the cornucopia psychology and the in- 
ner-and-outer Philosophy has been of great value. Fur- 
thermore, as a picture it provides a very good monistic 

19 



basis. All of experience is reduced to a sort of network 
where each Gegenglied is also a Zentralglied. A tree is 
a Gegenglied for me but I am also a Gegenglied for it. 

We reject it as insufficient because there is no differ- 
ence except of direction between subject and object, and 
no further meaning can be put into the picture. Each 
object is a subject. It reduces the distinction to a point 
of view and is not properly an analysis. 

This is a good instance of making a system of an anal- 
ogy. Monism is obtained by eliminating instead of har- 
monizing differences. The analogy is good, but not 
enough to solve our problems. To really grapple with 
the facts of experience, we must differentiate the subject 
from the object by more than a geometric direction. The 
subject is more than a center of concepts. 

Besides all this, if we regard our consciousness, as 
Miinsterberg says, with our eyes closed, we shall find no 
Zentralglied but all Gegenglieds, and we have been again 
confusing a Philosophical subject with an Epistemolog- 
ical one. Perhaps the Epistemological subject is not a 
u Glied'' at all. 

The limitations of this system come, I believe, from its 
having originated out of a polemic against those who put 
inner experience for the subject and outer experience for 
the object. This last position has a historical interest 
but no Epistemological basis, and we may pass it over, 
coming to the Psychology most accepted by us in 
America. 

The Subject as Will. 

Here the analysis into subject and object is accepted 
and as the content of the subject is put will, for the ob- 
ject is put whatever else there is in consciousness, some- 
times the feeling being absorbed into the will in some 
way or else everything apparently being thrown to the 
side of the object. 

This division of the faculties of the mind into will and 
intellection is the classical one and prevailed in England 
till the coming in of Kantian influence. Practical con- 

20 



duct and Ethics gave will; Logic and concepts gave in- 
tellect. It was perhaps Rousseau's emphasis on feelings 
and Aesthetics which led Kant to add as a third faculty 
that of feeling. Some therefore call this identifying of 
the subject with the will, a return to the pre-Kantian 
view. Its vogue in the United States is due in part to 
its seeming to afford a basis to practical life and ethics. 
Its popularity is a part of our practical nature. 

To my mind the refutation of the will-philosophy re- 
quires more training in Psychological lore than a setting- 
aside of it by a better philosophy. Because, however, I do 
not pretend to have done justice to the latter and am un- 
willing to leave anything undone which may interest 
thinkers in it, it seems worth while to attempt a criticism 
of the will-philosophy. Perhaps enough weaknesses will 
be pointed out to shake the absolute confidence which it 
seems to enjoy in some circles. At any rate to those who 
are not already pledged to its support, our discussion 
may serve to show that its claims have not been over- 
looked. 

The refutation of the will-philosophy is difficult be- 
cause so much that is good seems inextricably bound up 
with it and furthermore there are no single lines of argu- 
ment, which its advocates agree upon. Each writer takes 
a different position and the comxDlaint of one of them 
(Caldwell, I think) that they do not present a solid front, 
but each spends his best energy in criticising the others, 
is justified. 

We may perhaps distinguish three types. First there is 
no attempt to get outside of consciousness, the will is put 
for the subject and the concept for the object ; Wundt and 
Ward have been regarded as exponents of this position. 
Second, the will or subject is outside and unsearchable 
while the object is the conceptual world. (Schopenhauer). 
Third, the subject is conceived of as outside ; conscious- 
ness is its functioning and the concepts or the results of 
its functioning make up the object. Of this view Miins- 
terberg and the Neofichteans are the exponents. Often 

21 



the three types seem to be held in different pages of the 
same book, though in systematic thinking there is a con- 
stant tendency to start from the first type and be contin- 
ually pushed along till the will has become a postulate in 
either the second or third types. 

Schopenhauer. 

Schopenhauer, for instance (Welt als Wille and Vors- 
tellung), says in section 7 : "Our point of departure has 
been from neither subject nor object, but from the Vorstel- 
lung which already contains both and presupposes both." 
This promises a psychological basis. In section 5, how- 
ever, he identifies the Vorstellung with the object : "Vors- 
tellung and object which are indeed one * * * object and 
Vorstellung are the same." And in section 18, paragraph 
2, as also in the Treatise on Sufficient Reason, he inden- 
tifies subject and will. In the latter part of section 7, he 
gives up finding the real subject in the Vorstellung at all. 
After he has shown the one-sidedness of Materialism and 
Solipsism and thus the interdependence between the sub- 
ject and object, he continues that this enables us to see 
"that the innermost essence of the world, the Ding an 
sich, is not to be found in either of these two elements of 
the Vorstellung." In section 18, paragraph 1, he frankly 
confesses his inability to find the will in consciousness. 
"In fact the desired significance of the world which is 
given to me simply as my Vorstellung, or the passage 
from it as a mere Vorstellung of the knowing subject to 
that which it may be besides, would never be found if 
the investigator were nothing else than the purely know- 
ing subject, a winged cherub without a body." This 
leads to the body as the point of departure. 

Schopenhauer is worth quoting from at length because 
most of the will-philosophers are his disciples. Miin- 
sterberg we are reminded of all through here. For in- 
stance when he says (Psychology, p. 25) : "If my being 
were merely a theoretical observation (Auschauung) of 
the surrounding then of course I would know of no ich 

22 



which should be given me different in principle from the 
surroundings." 

Toreturn to Schopenhauer, in section 19, having for- 
saken Psychology as the point of departure, he takes the 
body: ''The knowing subject is therefore an individual 
through this special relation to a body which is otherwise 
only a concept like all other bodies." Section 18, para- 
graph 3 : ''This identity of the will and the body can 
never be proved. It is knowledge of a wholly peculiar 
sort whose truth, therefore, is not in any way to be 
brought under one of the four rubrics into which in the 
Treatise on Sufficient Reason, I divided all truth — I 
might, therefore, distinguish this truth from all others 
and call it the tear e^oxw philosophical truth." * This 
is honest but unconvincing. And finally: ' k the knowledge 
which I have of my will, although immediate, is not to be 
separated from my knowledge of my body." Sec. 18 ? 
par. 2. 

These quotations do more than to show the difficulties 
of the will -philosophy, they lead up to the fact that the 
will is to be associated with objects rather than with the 
subject ; here with the body rather than with the con- 
sciousness, and in other cases with blind impulses and 
forces, all of which are under the head of Vorstellungen 
and energies. There is no call for a "Wunder icar efo^z/" 
in finding a place for will among the other energies which 
make up the objective world. But of this later. 

The Will as the Subjective Element in Consciousness. 

We are called upon to discuss this as a distinct type of 
the will-philosophy, because, although the thinkers 
usually cited as exponents of the position are not them- 
selves satisfied with it for their final basis, yet the opin- 
ion has gone about that some of our best Psychologists 
consider it a sufficient basis for a system, and isolated 

* Compare the opinion with which James likes to dally: "Our entire 
feeling of spiritual activity or what commonly passes by that name is 
really a feeling of bodily activities. Psy. 1-301. 

23 



quotations from their works would seem to justify this 
belief. But Wundt, in spite of his apperception theory, 
which is supposed to support this position, follows in the 
footsteps of Schopenhauer, making the object all that is 
knowable and the unknown will the basis of the phenom- 
enal. 

Furthermore, although he is supposed to have started 
as a Psychologist and therefore Epistemology ought to 
be the basis of his system, his real point of departure is 
entirely external and philosophical. He begins with a 
distinction between natural sciences and spiritual sciences, 
of which a distinction between Will and Vorstellung be- 
comes a consequence. We have already called attention 
to his inconsistency in subordinating practical philosophy 
to theoretical and yet in psychology reducing the object 
to the subject. 

James also is not for a moment satisfied with finding 
the will as subject in an analysis of consciousness. He 
comes at his problem, which finally appears to be to just- 
ify a place for religion and the practical world in philos- 
ophy, again and again, always with a new line of argu- 
ment. In one place he says his "reasons for belief in vol- 
untary attention as a force are ethical." Psy. 1-454. In 
another he inclines with Schopenhauer to start from the 
body as a point of departure : "A supply of ideas of the 
various movements that are possible, left in the memory 
by experience of their involuntary performance, is thus 
the first prerequisite of the voluntary life." Psy. 2-458. 
Again in Yol. 2-534 he makes a sort of tri-partate divis- 
ion, like Spirit, Soul, and Body, and defines volition as a 
"relation not between our Self and extra-mental reality, 
but between our Self and our states of mind." 

In Yol. 1-225 he takes an Epistemological start from 
"Thought goes on." Analysis shows him that the fifth 
and final element included in the process of thought is : 
"Thought chooses from among the objects independent of 
itself." This fifth element then becomes by mere asser- 
tion the basis for thought and choice becomes "the sim- 

24 



plest and most fundamental characteristic of thought !" 
What tlic word choice can mean, or selection either, to 
one who proclaims himself for the purpose of Psycholo- 
gy a determinist, it is hard to see. A determinist con- 
ception of will would seem at once to consign it to the 
category of objects. James, however, is a determinist 
only when he wants to be really scientific. The rest of 
the time he accepts free will. 

The hopelessness of trying to find the will as a separate 
element in consciousness would seem to become entirely 
patent from the fact that whether with Laromiguiere and 
the earliest Will-philosophers, or with its latest advocates, 
it is always a feeling of strain or innervation or effort 
that must be spoken of. Compare Schopenhauer, (W. a. 
W. u. Y. Sec. 21,) where he speaks of having knowledge 
as "a feeling that the essence of one's own appearance 
is will." And James 2-298 : "For this central part of 
the Self felt. " "The Self is the notion of an intimate 
activity or agency which has become warm through re- 
peated emphasis," 1-298. Ladd, Psy., p. 61, defines an 
act of attention as "a purposeful volition suffused with 
peculiar feelings of effort or strain and accompanied by a 
changed condition of the field of discriminative conscious- 
ness as respects intensity, content and clearness. In 
this last definition the words "purposeful volition" are a 
tautologous repetition of what we set out to define, the 
third element confessedly is a mere accompaniment, and 
we have left as the definition of an act of attention c 'the 
peculiar feelings of effort or strain." 

Aside from this we find that in all attempts to define 
what is meant by will, recourse is had to what we clearly 
recognize as the more objective factors in experience. All 
descriptions of will are taken from phenomena in the ob- 
ject world and the purest types of will are to be found in 
the least subjective facts. The answer usually made to 
this objection is, that the subject recognizes forces only 
because it has projected its own characteristics into ob- 
jects. This answer is Metaphysical and along this line, 

25 



all content would be lost to the word object. Our reason 
for contrasting subject and object is gone. If the energy 
in the object is only the personification of the subject so 
is all the rest of the object. 

Subject and object thus come very close together, but 
somehow the explanatory value of our analysis has been 
dissipated. In our indentification of energy and subject 
we seem to be approaching the old materialism which 
tried to define consciousness in terms of motions. James' 
statement, Psy. 2-551: "It is the essence of conscious- 
ness (or of the neural process which underlies it) to insti- 
gate movement of some sort," will do as a statement of 
fact but not as a definition. The subject we are trying 
to define is something different from a force. The confus- 
ion between description and definition occurs again when 
consciousness is spoken of as a stream and the word 
stream is then put as its distinguishing and fundamental 
character. 

It is here that we find the difficulty of the Monism 
which Panpsychism reaches. Its very ease makes it in- 
sufficient. If the psyche or will be unconscious then it was 
not found in consciousness, and therefore is a repetition 
of the old materialism. A Panpsychism, however, which 
puts consciousness into moving billiard balls is startlingly 
metaphysical and has contributed not one whit to either 
Epistemology or Psychology. Ah talk of an unconscious 
will tastes strongly of the division of the faculties. Com- 
pare Schopenhauer, Sec. 27 : ' 'In its lowest stages the 
will presents itself as a blind tendency, a dark senseless 
impulse." 

The Subject as Will Superior to Consciousness. 

As we have said those psychologists who represent the 
will philosophy have seen that the will as an energy 
surely includes objects and therefore is superior to both 
subject and object in consciousness or else as a subject 
reduces the objects to mere accidents of itself. They 
have practically quit the Epistemological starting point. 
It is absurd for them to keep up the pretense of deriving 

26 



the will from consciousness when it is perfectly capable 
of walking by itself as in involuntary activity. Witli 
their definition of the Psyche many psychic laws would 
be valid beyond the realm of consciousness. 

The following quotations will show that some psychol- 
ogists have had to give up rinding the will as an ele- 
ment in consciousness. Ebbinghaus Psy., p. 561: 
''Will acts are not basal appearances of the soul life 
in the same sense in which sensations and concepts 
are. They do not stand along side these as a new class of 
psychic elementary forms whose parts are or are not 
added at times to the parts of the other classes, but they 
stand above them. They are in their simplest terms the 
basal form of the unities in which alone sensations, con- 
cepts and feelings appear as real. The impulse (Trieb) is 
a will-act without the accompanying Vorstellung. ' ' Com- 
pare Schopenhauer, Sec. 19: "We must learn to distin- 
guish from the will itself those things which belong to 
its appearance, which has many gradations ; for in- 
stance, the being accompanied by knowledge and there- 
fore the being determined by motives. These belong, as 
we shall see, not to its essence but only to its clear ap- 
pearance as animal and man." 

To return to Ebbinghaus, Psy. 565: "Will-acts are 
therefore not ultimate or original logically but chrono- 
logically they are." 566: The will is not "something 
new, different, added to the sensation, concept and feel- 
ing which can immediately be experienced but not fur- 
ther explained." 168: "Along with these three classes of 
forms" (feeling, sensation, and concepts) "there is no oc- 
casion to set up, in addition, will-acts or desires as spec- 
ial elementary forms of the soul life. The psychic con- 
ditions of conduct * * * are combinations of sensations, 
concepts, and feelings." 

So Kulpe, Psy., p. 267, reduces will to effort and con- 
cludes "The elementary will quality, therefore would 
seem to reduce to definite sensations qualities." 

Those who desire a fuller discussion of the will-psychol- 
ogy will find the ground thoroughly covered in a series of 

27 



articles by Bradley in Mind 188G, p. 805: "Is there any 
special activity of attention" ; 1887, p. 354, "Association 
and Thought" (especially pages 366-7); 1888, p. 1, "On 
Pleasure, Pain, Desire, and Volition." The following 
quotations will show Bradley's position : "Is attention 
so far as it is psychial activity, an original element, and 
is there any specific function of attention? The strict 
result of the English analytical school would give us a 
negative answer to both of these questions. With that 
denial I agree and have not been able to find sufficient 
reason to doubt its truth." Mind 1886, p. 305. "If at- 
tention is not an event or a law of events, has it a right 
to exist in empirical science? Is it not simply a revivial 
of the doctrine of the faculties? It becomes a phrase of- 
fered in explanation of phenomena beyond that field from 
which it has been drawn." Mind 1887, p. 366. 

Ward's position against Bradley is given in Mind 1884, 
pp.153 and 465; 1887, p. 45 (a reply to the criticisms by 
Bradley, and by Bain 1886, pp. 205 and 457) and 1887, 
p. 564. 

Bradley has recently returned to the discussion : Mind 
1901, p. 437 "Some remarks on Conation"; 1902, p. 1, 
"On active attention" ; p. 289, "On Mental Conflict and 
Imputation"; p. 437, "The Definition of Will" (the 
series to be continued). 

A very good review of Miinsterberg's attack on Wundt's 
apperception theory is given by Croom Robertson in 
Mind 1890, p. 235. Ryland, in his review of Stout's 
Manual of Psychology, Mind 1901, 547, calls attention 
to the fact that Stout never once mentions the word ap- 
perception which in his previous work played the princi- 
pal role. 

Comx^are an article by Loveday on "Theories in Mental 
Activity" in Mind 1901, p. 455. 

The Will as a Subject Intuited. 

It might seem useless to leave the realm of Psychology 
and pursue the argument over into the realm of Philoso- 
phy, whither the preceding paragraph would take us; 

28 



especially as that carries as into the Held where intu- 
itions are weighed over against consciousness, and we arc 
made acquainted with tilings that have not passed 
through the portal of knowledge. The name of Munster- 
berg, however, carries such an authority as being that of 
an able and careful psychologist that, though he frankly 
has forsaken psychology as his starting point ("The way 
to Psychology is through Philosophy"), the idea prevails 
that his psychology somewhere accounts for his identi- 
fying the subject with will. His approach like Wundt's 
is through a distinction between the Gfeistesw T issen- 
schaf ten and the Naturwissenschaften. He differs from 
Wundt only in classing psychology with the Naturwis- 
senschaften. This seems to take away every basis of dis- 
cussion ; for, if psychology is not to be our point of de- 
parture but in some superior way has been consigned to 
the domain that deals only w T ith objects, whence are we to 
obtain our subject. He seems to have two lines of argu- 
ment, one reminding us of the Faith Philosophy and the 
other of Fichte. A fair example of the intuitional stand- 
point is the following, Psy., p. 50: "The real ego is not 
something which is perceived and looked at by me but is 
the self-affirming (stellungnehmende) actuality of which 
I know only through inner activity and of which there- 
fore I know in an incomparably different way (Sinne) 
from what I do of the concepts on which my ego lives 
(an denen -mem Ich sich auslebt)". We might ask how 
he knows enough about this subject to call it will instead 
of letting it "answer to Hi or to any loud cry." Scho- 
penhauer in Sec. 24, par. 2, of his World as Will and 
Concept, has a very ingenious explanation to account for 
the fact that this will which is the best known thing in 
experience has the fewest characteristics of knowability. 
His reasoning reduces it to the zero of knowability, and 
we cannot avoid comparing this infinite zero, as an explan- 
ation, with the infinite absolute of the old theological ex- 
planations. 

Of Miinsterberg's Fichtean line of argument the follow- 
ing is an example where there must be an Ich because 

29 



there is a nicht-Ich and where the whole world of objects, 
including all of existence requires a subject because there 
can be no object without a subject. We would say, if 
the logical analogy requires such an assumption in order 
to be valid then do not use it at all. Psy. p. 51, "Das 
Wollen requires das Nichtwollen and although blue has 
a meaning without a red, and even a black without a 
white, or cold without a hot, ein Wollen has no sense un- 
less it rejects a Nicht-Wollen and a Nicht-Wollen points 
back to a Wollen." The verdict of a hundred years' dis- 
cussion has been that an Ich whose only claim to reality 
is " Jenes Gregensatzverhaltniss" (Psy., p. 51) is not called 
for. 

Final Reasons for Rejecting the Identification 
of Subject and Will. 

Before concluding this sketchy discussion of the will- 
philosophy we will mention three further reasons for re- 
jecting the identification of the subject with will. First, 
if Mechanics is right in rejecting the word force as be- 
ing anything more than a convenient term to group to- 
gether certain occurrences, all content would be taken out 
of the word will and therefore out of the w T ord subject as 
the basis for a system. 

Second, no satisfactory place is found for feeling. Scho- 
penhauer, Sec. 11 : u The idea which the word feeling 
characterizes has only a negative content ; viz, that some- 
thing is present in the consciousness which is not abstract- 
knowledge of the reason." In Sec. 18, par. 1, however, 
he classes the stronger feelings with will and the weaker 
ones with the Vorstellungen. Wundt and Paulsen try 
to attach feeling to the will in some way. 

Third, no justice is done to the value part of life which 
includes the whole range of experience. To say with 
Wundt that will implies an end and an end imj)lies a 
value is not sufficient. Others forces establish no ends 
and no value. JSTo more can the will. If the worth in 
experience depends on the will-philosophy, the verdict 

30 



must be do worths — Pessimism. A will ;is nu element 
with which is bound up n value element is manifestly a 
conglomerate and open to further analysis. 

In rejecting the will as establishing the content of the 
subject, we have not overlooked the advantage-that comes 
to Monism through the approach of the ego to the other 
objects of nature. The classical dualism between con- 
sciousness and matter seems to be overcome. The falling- 
stone is a spirit like my moving body. Of course, we 
sympathize with all endeavors to unify experience, but 
there is such a tiling as being too prompt in covering over 
differences through eagerness to reach the unity. In this 
case the advantage is gained by surrendering all the real 
content of consciousness. Through some clever feats of 
jugglery, consciousness has been put one side, and we 
have a world with no conscious element in it. 

THE SUBJECT AS HAYING A CONTENT. 

We are now ready to consider more positively what can 
best be meant by the analysis into subject and object. 
We shall try to put into the words some significance that 
shall assist us in classifying and understanding our ex- 
perience. Some time a better line of cleavage may be 
discovered than that suggested by the words subject and 
object. In such a case, however, the inadequacy and 
not the uselessness of this present division will appear. 

We believe that if the word subject is to be used at all 
it must have some content and be so far knowable. We 
cannot see the advantage of using the term if it is 
to be deprived of all content. It seems a confession of 
defeat to refuse it a meaning and a place in knowledge. 
The following objection from Miinsterberg to giving it a 
content would apply to all knowledge, and he could say 
that the descriptions of redness or roundness are "retro- 
spective substitutes" not present in knowing. The dif- 
ficulty which he feels seems to be entirely artificial. *'I 
feel as my ego my manner of acting which I experience 
when I exert myself. This is an actuality to me because 
I act. I know it because I will it. * * * In describing it 

31 



I would use words like feeling, impulse, will-acts, body- 
motions, and strains, but these would be retrospective 
substitutes not present during the will. I must try to 
describe the ego but not use the description as a point of 
departure for Epistemology." Violet odor is as describ- 
able as anything is and though the word may not be 
present while we are sniffing the air we would soon coin 
a word to represent it. The violet odor is certainly an 
integral part of our conceptual world. If reality be some- 
thing hopelessly different in the case of the ego, it is like- 
wise hopelessly different in the case of everything else. 

Clues to the Meaning of Subject. 

We may employ as clues to the meaning of the subject : 
first, the meaning of the object; and second, the result 
of the controversy over primary and secondary qualities. 

The first serves as a clue, because the content of the 
word-object has been fairly well agreed upon; although, 
so far as I know, there is no unanimity in using a name 
to express this content. 

Of course, in any knowledge, the subjective part cannot 
be entirely eliminated. But, in memory, we can fix our 
attention on a part that can more and more be separated 
out of its relation in consciousness, out of its actual ex- 
perience, and regarded by itself. The orange, as exper- 
ienced, is really before me, only as it is round and yellow 
and odorous and resisting in consciousness. But ab- 
stracting these qualities I can still think of an orange as 
by itself, independently of the relation in consciousness. 
It remains because of its relation to other objects. This 
object, if the abstraction be carried on far enough, be- 
comes a mere form, an imaginary thing in itself (Ding an 
Sich) which I can conceive of with all its attributes re- 
moved. This is the pure object which is never reached 
but is approached as a limit 

In the same way a room full of chairs is entirely de- 
pendent on consciousness and experience for full reality, 
but by separating out the relations in consciousness (the 
qualities) we can think of the chairs as objects by them- 

32 



selves when no one is thereto see them. We can think 
of them in rows. We cao compare them with other 
chairs in other rooms. We can reason about them. We 
can draw pictures oi' them. We can in our minds re- 
arrange them. But to restore reality again the relation 
in consciousness must be re-introduced. 

For this object, thought of in abstraction from the re- 
lation in consciousness, the Germans have been inclined 
to use the word Vorstellung (presentation, concept). In 
the threefold division it corresponds to intellection. In 
some uses of the word it corresponds to the word knowl- 
edge, and therefore Croom Robertson wished to substi- 
tute the word intellection for knowledge (Mind O. S. 8, 
p. 10). The word reasoning as contrasted with senti- 
ments is often used as distinguishing it. 

This object, we said, was made up of relationships 
thought of in abstraction from the relation in conscious- 
ness. The further the abstraction is carried the more 
phenomenal does the object become. Its furthest limit 
is the purely formal relation of mathematics. Mathe- 
matics states the relations which may hold between ob- 
jects no matter what the reality be that consciousness 
puts in. The ultimate objects of mathmetics are points, 
positions, absolute abstractions, where the thing has only 
position. 



Object 



<** 



^ 



4F 



& 



& 






Subject 



3p 



33 



Universal s in Object World. 

An answer to the question what becomes of necessity 
and universals under this conception of objectivity will 
elucidate the position. The relations are necessary only 
in that they are formal. A line is necessarily a line be- 
cause we have conceived of it as a line. The statement 
that all geese are white, is true for all time. If a black 
goose should be discovered we would have the choice 
either of refusing to call it a goose or else of changing 
our concept goose. The forms are necessary. It is not 
necessary that certain objects be put into particular 
forms. The actual mathematical relations into which w T e 
put experience are the result of a long struggle for exist- 
ence between different forms. We may call them cate- 
gories, not brought by the subject, but by experience as 
a whole. New experience calls for new forms. JSTot that 
the old forms are thus proven false, but inapplicable. 
Plane measurement was right and is right, but to surfaces 
upon the earth we now apply spherical measure. 

This is true of all classifications and formulations 
whether in physics or in the doctrinal forms of religion. 
The content of experience outgrows the particular form. 
Euclidian geometry is true for all time and for all minds 
that construct a plane geometry, Experience must show 
whether stellar orbits are to put into its forms or not. So 
the forms represented by the words subject and object 
may change from generation to generation. Controversy 
must decide which is fittest to survive. There is there- 
fore nothing in the persistence of controversies in the do- 
main of truth to frighten us. We must expect that con- 
troversies about the fittest form will persist even after 
experience has ceased to present anything new. 

This view of the object world as made up of surviving 
forms might be made of wider application and all the 
contours and colors into which experience now runs as 
into moulds might be regarded as transient forms which 
a still wider experience will ignore. So the human body 
itself might be a form whose passing did not mean ani- 

34 



hilation. 'Phis is not an acceptance of the fourth dimen- 
sion world view, although it is a recognition of the ap- 
parent inadequacy of our present Tonus to account for 
the whole of experience. 

The World of Truth. 

Of the various words which in part represent what is 
meant by object in the analysis of consciousness, the one 
which appears best adapted to sum them all up, seems to 
be the word truth. 

There are two objections to the word concept; first, 
the word has been historically associated with the meta- 
physical subject and thus has been used in contrast with 
the material object. The following diagrams illustrate 
the varied uses of the word concept : 



Object 



o 



r 



J 



Object 



Subject 



Dualism. 



jr 



o 



Subject 



Identity Philosophy. 



Object 



* 



Jf 



o 



Subject 



Will Philosophy. 

35 



Second, the word refers to a single object and thus does 
not bring out the fact that objects are distinguished as 
such by their complete relativism inter se. An object as 
an object is never anything by itself but always in rela- 
tion to other objects. Concept is, therefore, too concrete 
a word. The one we select must be thoroughly abstract. 
An object grows out of an experience through an abstract 
process of comparison. An object acquires a meaning as 
an object only by reference to an object world, not prim- 
arily by contrast with the subject. Of this we shall speak 
later. The essential characteristic of the object world is 
the relativism independent of the relation to the subject. 

This characteristic of complete relativism, the word 
truth is fitted to express. We may therefore put the 
world of truth as synonymous with the phrase "object 
world." The orange can be spoken of as an object only 
when its relations, temporal, spacial, color, etc., to other 
objects is thought of. As an object therefore it is ab- 
stract and not concrete. When concreteness or reality is 
given to any portion of the object world then the subjec- 
tive element is restored and so far its objective character 
is taken away, although practice enables us to return at 
will to the abstraction. 

The word truth moreover does not lead to a division of 
faculties as would the word intellection, yet all the dis- 
tinctive characteristics of intellection as set over against 
feeling are in it. 

As it includes all possible relations of objects, it is 
sufficiently broad to be used in the realm of psychology 
and motives and will-acts. 

The objection might be made that the word truth 
already includes the whole of experience and reality, and 
therefore is too broad, since it embraces the feelings and 
the subject also. We reply that the word reality is a 
broader word than truth. It is possible always to rep- 
resent reality in terms of truth, but reality is more than 
merely true. A statement that I fell down, may be true 

36 



my Palling down is neither true nor false. The 



Or false 

word true is not applicable, 
occurrence. 



My falling down is a real 



Object 



% 










Subject 



Primary and Secondary Qualities. 

With a fairly well defined conception of what is meant 
by object in our analysis we may pass on to the second 
clue in finding a content for the subject. 

Locke discovered that certain of the qualities of objects 
did not belong to the object, but were rather to be put on 
the side of the subject. These he distinguished as the 
secondary qualities. Berkley and Hume then showed 
that the primary qualities were likewise to be thrown to 
the side of the subject and that there w x as no distinction 
to be made between primary and secondary qualities. 
The object was thus rapidly being dissipated. Kant tried 
to retain it as a Ding an sic7i, but the next generation 
rejected even this vestige. 

37 



The following diagrams will illustrate the positions of 



Locke, Kant and Fichte 



Object 



*> 
^ 






X 



O 






Object 



O 



Subject 






<i 



Subject 



Locke 



Kant 



Object 



'S S « i. 

tq P? I o B3 



Subject- 



Subject 



Fichte 



The qualities, therefore, are particularly characteristic 
of the subject. 

The World of Worth. 

The qualities especially associated with the senses are 
color, taste, odor, hardness, smoothness, etc. Those con- 
nected with feeling are pain, pleasure, etc. With the 
emotions are associated hatred and love. With the whole 
world of subjectivity are associated the qualities of value 
and worth. 



38 









<k 



1. ^ 

r 4 **> v> 

*}> '<? <%■ ■% '°s ''<$ "^V 



\ *> \ %:% ^ % c 



Now looking all these qualities over, the most inclusive 
one, the one best suited to stand for them all, seems to 
be represented by the word worth. 

Doubtless objections to the word come to the mind at 
once, and perhaps in time a happier word will be hit 
upon. But this word seems at least to lie in the right 
direction. 

It is abstract but purposely so because it stands for 
only part of consciousness or reality, abstracted away. 
It is what has been abstracted from the objective ele- 
ments. 

It is not meant to be the supporter for the whole of 
experience nor for the whole of the person. It is not the 
metaphysical subject. It does not by itself stand for 
reality as opposed to the phenomenal object world. I 
is not meant to be the synthesis of all the elements in con- 
sciousness. 

It can not be concrete because the concrete is the union 
of both the subject and object. 

It is not a substance. It is not tangible. The word 
worth is farthest removed from objective relations. But 
it does sufficiently stand for the subjective part in all 
states of consciousness. 

We can never use the word worth without having 
reference to a subject. An object can have a worth only 
as related to a subject in consciousness. If ever it is used 
of one object in relation to another, the second object is 

39 
/ 



thereby personified. The most elaborately constructed 
machine, with perfect harmony of parts, is, by itself, 
valueless, and if ever the word worth is used of anything, 
it is evidence that the personal or subjective element 1ms 
entered. No other word is so characteristic of the ego, of 
the "I," of subjects, of persons. 

Compare Prof. Ladd's statement (Phil, of Conduct p. 
37): " Every form and degree of what men call either 
good or bad has reference to a state of sentient and 
conscious life and all higher and more significant forms 
to the experiences of a self-conscious life — if conscious 
life were extinguished there would be no more good. 
What is good? What is bad? States of selves and 
what has reference to states of selves." 

If it be objected that the word worth is not positive 
enough because there is no agreement as to what is valu- 
able, the reply is that that is just the reason why it is 
best suited to what we mean by the subject, inasmuch 
as each consciousness has its own conception of worth. 

But does it not exalt too much the pleasure-pain factor, 
thus lowering the dignity of life to the plane of utili- 
tarianism, and on the other hand can the word worth be 
used for the subjective part in such neutral sensations 
as color and form? In reply to the first question we say 
that the word worth includes everything that is noblest 
in life. And in answer to the second, that if there is 
such a thing as a "neutral feeling" the word worth 
should be extended to include it. In fact, however, the 
word, though usually used of the highest forms of sub- 
jectivity, stands for the essence of the first conscious life 
when it is as yet hardly to be distinguished from so-called 
unconscious reactions. The birth of consciousness in the 
lowest animal life is indicated by the appreciation of 
worths and not by the feeling. The subjective factor in 
the simplest organism is not feeling but worth, and only 
in a highly developed consciousness are certain subjective 
elements degraded to feelings. 

The word worth is neither active nor passive. Nor can 
the word that stands for the subject be either active or 

40 



passive, activity and passivity being words nsed of 
objective relations. Peeling is usually thought of as 
passive and desire as active. Worth is able to stand for 
the subjective part in both. In desire the analysis into 
subject and object has progressed far enough for the 
worth part to be singled out and treated as an object by 
being compared with other worths. 

The analysis of consciousness into worth and truth em- 
braces what seemed to be the entirely distinct antitheses 
of person and thing (or ego and non-ego) and feeling and 
thought. This latter antithesis is as fundamental as the 
former, though as more psychological it has not been so 
prominent in the great systems. Feeling is very differ- 
ent from the recognition of relations. "No feeling as 
such or as felt is a relation — even a relation between 
feelings is not itself a feeling or a felt." (Green in Mind 
O. S. 7-28.) " Through feelings we become acquainted 
with things, but only by our thoughts do we know about 
them." (James Psy. 1-222.) 

The analysis we have made accounts for a phenomenon 
which so far as I know Wm. Hamilton was the first to 
emphasize, namely that knowledge and feeling — percep- 
tion and sensation, though always co-existent, are always 
in the inverse ratio of each other. (Spencer Psy. 2 p. 252.) 

We may speak of worth as a category applied to ex- 
perience and thus corresponding to the category of truth, 
the former including value, feeling, sensing, etc., and the 
latter relationship, and ultimately time-space-cause. 

The following diagrams will illustrate the position : 



Object 



Object 













s 

v> 

■a 




/ 
& 






J 


*s 




















Sense- feeling- 


emotion 





*\ 



r 






1* 



Subject 



Subject 



41 



The same diagram illustrates the dualisms in the hist- 
ory of philosophy, though today we would prefer to 
avoid using the words internal and external which result 
from applying to the experience of others a distinction 
which is not true of our own experience nor of theirs. 
Matter and spirit moreover would be put both on the ob- 
ject side. Cogitatio would be put in the center with an 
ego not further defined to correspond to the extensio. 



Object 



^ 






sf 






Subject 



In these illustrations, both an X and a Y are necessary 
to establish every point. Even if we put Y equals 0, 
the zero here does not mean nothingness but a smaller 
number than any we may give. Zero is a limit indefin- 
itely approached but never reached. The same with the 
subjective and objective elements in consciousness. In 
thinking of a mathematical triangle or of a chemical atom 
the subjective element is reduced to zero; in a jjain, on 
the contrary, the objective element is zero. Of course, 
they are right who maintain that pure subject can never 
be reached, but with equal right can we say that pure 
object can never be reached nor pure zero. Now that the 
phenomenality of the object world is so frequently put for- 
ward, we may be more ready to pay attention to worths 
which seemed to be so hopelessly phenomenal as to de- 
serve no place in science which was content with nothing 
less than absoluteness. 

42 



The Ego or Self. 

The ego or self , which determined us in selecting the 
words subject and object for our analysis, is a very com- 
plex thing. Into the idea there enters unity, energy, 
worth, and perhaps other elements. The subjective char- 
acteristic of the ego or self, however, is not its unity 
(Ladd), nor its energy (James); it is the appreciation of 
worths. The two former may or may not be essential to 
the conception, but when the third goes the self goes. 
The self or ego as a whole is to be thrown technically to 
the object side. It is a concept in which the factors of 
unity and force have been added to the worth side in con- 
sciousness. 

Out of undifferentiated experience, that is, experience 
not yet become consciousness and therefore not experience 
in our sense of the word, it is the distinction between value 
and relation, (essentially, logically, and chronologically 
primary,) which produces consciousness. This distinction, 
in fact, marks the birth of consciousness. Here also is 
the beginning of memory. We may say, perhaps, that 
the transformation of mere reflexes into consciousness, 
which psychologically is due to memory and distinguishes 
the now from the then, is epistemologically the result of 
the distinction between value and relation. The now is 
thus inseparably associated with the subject and with 
the ego. 

No matter how true may be the insistence of our an- 
alysis on the worth side of life, psychologically it stands 
or falls with its ability to account for the empirical ego 
or self. Although we do not deny the validity of other 
analyses, we are not content with showing merely that 
our analysis is important and is justified by experience. 
Our claim is that it is fundamental and primary in psy- 
chology, and that from the difference between a relation 
and a value is derived that striking difference which I 
experience between the self and the not-self. We are far 
therefore from rejecting the ego as " unrettbar." The 
ego must remain but as a worth and not as a unit or an 

43 



energy. For this cause do we go into the discussions of 
the next few headings, which are indeed difficult to deal 
with satisfactorily. Our purpose is to show that these 
topics can be as intelligibly discussed from our stand- 
point as from any other and in my opinion better dis- 
cussed. 

One reason for the difficulty of seeing the availability 
of our analysis in accounting for the experience of the 
self is that the latter seems so concrete ; as though we 
could pass on every side of it (except one), while the 
epistemological subject is an abstraction to be looked at 
as a picture on a wall, artificial, the product of imagi- 
nation. The self throws itself at us like something hard, 
while the subject in consciousness is a gossamer web 
which gives way whereever we try to seize it. If our 
philosophy has taught us that the book which we look at 
on the table is, as a book, an abstraction similar in kind 
to the book which we think of with our eyes closed, this 
difficulty will disappear. The consciousness of self is the 
result of abstractions and has many gradations. When 
insistently pursued it scatters out each side along the 
way, leaving us to follow after a smaller and smaller 
thing which finally becomes, to our fixed gaze, indistin- 
guishable from a non-existent. 

Another difficulty in seeing the availability of our an- 
alysis in accounting for the fact of the self is that to 
some the latter seems necessary as an agent for fulfilling 
the functions of thinking. Can the states of conscious- 
ness, it is asked, do the thinking ? Those who have been 
able to dismiss the agencies in physics and biology should 
be able to do the same here. 

Still another difficulty is that by asserting the phe- 
nomenality of both subject and object and yet putting all 
experience into one of these two categories, we resign 
any hope of knowing reality. The diagrams which we 
have used will, it is hoped, show that we experience 
reality, and if the word knowledge is used in a different 
sense from experience, then we know only a part of 
reality. 

44 



Bere the question maj be raised: "What becomes of 
objective reality under this view?" This question de- 
serves special consideration. 

Objective Reality. 

Any object is objectively real when it is so completely 
related to the whole world of experience that we can as- 
sert its reality without taking into consideration a par- 
ticular reality through an act of consciousness. Of an 
experience or state of consciousness, the objective reality 
depends on our ability" to relate it to the object world be- 
cause of its persistence in spite of changed objective re- 
lations or changed, senses. The experience of a rainbow 
has less objective reality than that of a stone because it 
does not seem to have a fixed relation to the object world. 
A pain has almost no objective reality because it seems to 
have no fixed objective relations and moreover cannot be 
seen, heard, tasted, or smelled. We may say that the 
objective reality of an experience depends on our ability 
to describe or define it in terms of other objects. 

The word concrete, therefore, though every experience 
and state of consciousness is concrete, is also used of 
objects which are in manifold relations to other ob- 
jects. The objective reality of an object depends on the 
concreteness which it preserves on account of its abund- 
ant relations to other objects which are immediately re- 
lated to the subject through experience, even though in 
the case of that particular object the subjective factor is 
reduced to zero. So an unseen planet may be known as 
objectively real and some would be willing to call it con- 
crete even though no telescope has ever detected it. And 
so aragon is real and in one use of the word, concrete, 
though no sense has ever sensed it. 

It is in this significance that some would distinguish 
between a real world and an existent world, using the 
former term of the epistemologically real world where 
subject and object are united in consciousness and the 
latter term of the world, thought of as real, independ- 
ent of the relation to the subject. This latter is an ab- 

45 



straction. It is also in the latter sense that some systems 
speak of progressive reality with the ultimately real or 
the absolute, as unattainable. A thing begins to be real, 
upon the y axis, as soon as thought of as a possible link 
in the network of relations which makes up the objective 
world. With no break does it increase in reality while 
the network is made finer and liner and more and more 
extensive until that particular link is in infinite relat- 
ions with every other link. This goal can never be 
reached and the extreme edges of the network must al- 
ways be frayed, hence the unattainableness of the abso- 
lute. 

Bxperience and Consciousness. 

In the use of the two words experience and conscious- 
ness the division into the two categories of the subject 
and object has already progressed so far that though they 
cover the same ground, the word experience has in mind 
the objective relations and the w T ord consciousness the 
subjective relations. Each covers the whole of reality. 
Perhaps the following diagram will illustrate this : 



Object 



«ft 



^ / 



t) 



Subject 



A representing reality, A 1 and A 2 are where the sub- 
jective factors have been more neglected, and Ai and A 2 
where the objective factors. All Hve represent the same 
original ex}3erience or state of consciousness, the word ex- 
perience being represented by the dark portions and the 
consciousness by the light portions. 

46 



When psychology claims to deal with consciousness, it 
can claim to cover every fact of experience and is there- 
fore the all embracing science. On the other hand the 
science of experience (experimental science) covers every 
fact and subordinates psychology to a branch of itself 
and works out a psychology without consciousness, con- 
Bciousness being an accidental spectator. Hence has re- 
sulted the problem of psycho-physical parallelism, with 
the result that pyschology must be put either on one side 
or the other or divided into two distinct sciences. The 
problem is overcome when we learn that both conscious- 
ness and experience are already abstractions covering the 
same reality. As fast as consciousness is reduced to ex- 
perience, we can speak of science. Historically and log- 
ically, therefore, we limit the term psychology to that 
borderland where the diremption between subject and 
object has not been completely carried out. Psychology 
has to deal with that part of the field of experience or 
consciousness where those elements which have the least 
objectivity, and the most subjectivity are being reduced, to 
objective relations. Psychology, therefore, does not deal 
with the subject as such. 

Two Tests of Reality. 

There are then two tests of reality, the fact of the re- 
lation to an object and the fact of a relation to a subject, 
— two ways of controlling, establishing, and imparting 
reality (experience or consciousness itself being not im- 
partable). Anything, for instance the unseen planet Nep- 
tune, that is in the objective relation, is real and there- 
fore can be conceivably put into the subjective relation so 
as to give it full or epistemological reality. Anything 
that is in the subjective relation like a pain is also real 
and can conceivably be put in the objective relations so 
as to be given full or ejyistemological reality. t 

Xow the words truth and worth represent the gradua- 
tion of Epistemology out of its own realm, where the 

tXoTE — This is a much more significant than Hegel's (Phil, of Law, Pre- 
face) : ''What is reasonable is actual and what is actual is reasonable." 

47 



words subject and object might be sufficient, into the 
larger world of thought and life. We are therefore able 
to assert the reciprocity between truth and value, so that 
though they are independent variables, they are ulti- 
mately united in a higher monism, corresponding in the 
universe as a whole to the undivided real which is the start- 
ing point of epistemology. Just as we asserted that what 
ever had objective relations therefore had subjective also, 
and whatever had subjective relations had objective also, 
so whatever is true, has a worth and (a point usually 
overlooked), whatever has a value is proportionately real 
and therefore is true. 

Worth as a Test of Reality. 

The establishing of this last point at once gives to Re- 
ligion the basis in epistemology which it has seemed to 
lack. Religious positions are not held because of their 
truth — for Geometry is true yet not a religion — but they 
are held because of their value. We leave this thus 
stated dogmatically because this is not the place to go 
into a historical and analytical proof of the statement. 

Suffice it to say that when worth is identified with the 
subjective element, with the person, the spirit- world of 
religion and the world of love of Christianity, become 
identified with the worth element in life and with the 
subject of Epistemology. 

Looking at a fact common sense says this has a value 
for me and it concludes that this is therefore true. And 
common sense is practically right. The truth may be 
grievously mixed up with error, but somewhere there is 
truth and when many agree in finding a value, of course 
so much more certain may we be that there is an object- 
ive correlative somewhere. If it be a hallucination it is 
a relation to a former object. 

Again and again have scientists taken up supposed 
realities which appeal to men as having great worth and 
have demonstrated them untrue and have been surprised 
to see the position accepted as real in spite of their de- 
monstrations. Common sense very rightly says, "May 

48 



not your demonstration be jnsl as faulty as my estimate 
o( worth." 

Only after constructive criticism, following in the wake 
oi' destructive criticism, has pointed out the new value 
will common sense forsake the old position. Be the 
proof never so clear, reasoning has never yet been able to 
overthrow a single religious tenet; the only way to re- 
move a religious position — and a sure way it is — is to 
show its lack of value. 

If we ask which religion has gained an influence, hist- 
ory will answer, "that which has established the reality 
of its positions by most clearly showing their worth ; but 
where a religion has tried to establish the reality of its 
positions principally through their truth, it has so far 
ceased to have a religious influence." It has ceased so 
far to be a religion and has become a science. We can 
also account for a seeming paradox justified by exper- 
ience ; namely, that that faith is the most religious which 
is against reason (Kierkegaard, Einubung im Christen - 
thum.) This is because such a faith must have a great 
value. 

With these two tests the advance into the realm of 
reality is an advance on two legs, worth bringing truth 
into new fields and truth leading the way to new worths. 
Instances of the latter are found in our every day life. 
Of the former we may cite as instances the doctrines of 
free-will, of immortality, and of divine sonship where 
truth has gained new insight into psychology, cosmology 
and into the conception of God, because men refused to 
give these doctrines up when they were "proven untrue. " 
Many a man who felt the hopelessness of his life, if his 
religioiis creed were to be given up, has been forced to 
meditate more profoundly and has found truth where to 
the superficial view there seemed only error. 

The Will. 

The question must already have arisen, what becomes 
of the will under this analysis. The answer will be 
found along the line of argument of " panpsychistic " 

49 



Monism. The will is an energy like electricity, heat and 
other energies. It is distinctly a spiritual energy. We 
do not argue whether the idea of energy is obtained from 
contemplating the object world or is a feeling belonging 
peculiarly to the subject and by it projected into object- 
ive relations. We merely take as a fact the idea of 
energy and ask whether it falls naturally to the side of 
the object or the subject, when we try to have that an- 
alysis do justice to the whole of consciousness. We do 
not question the privilege of any one to take the two 
words, subject and object, and to put relation, for in- 
stance, for the latter, and energy for the former. We 
only say that then the feeling part, the worth part 
in consciousness, has not been recognized, and that we 
are in materialism again — its grossness gone and subli- 
mated into energy but nevertheless materialism. We 
have, with such an analysis, no subject that can stand as 
such in a state of consciousness. Such an assignment of 
roles to subject and object does not come from Epistemol- 
ogy but from Cosmology. In Cosmology the will is the 
most important factor. The impelling thing in life is the 
pressure of the will to exert itself. It often appears that 
men do not act because of the pleasure or reward, but be- 
cause the pleasure offers a mode of greater life, because 
it is a greater vent to power. The doctrine of energism 
deserves the important place it has assumed in our think- 
ing. Above the gravity energies, above the physical and 
chemical energies, stands in importance the will energy. 
Yet not so different from them as some have thought. 
Through blind passions and through impulses it by de- 
grees grades over into them. It partakes of their determ- 
inism, just as the doughtiest of its champions has granted. 
In what point then does it differ from them ? In our 
postulating of it a worth side, a subject side, not re- 
vealed to us directly but indirectly in accounting for 
its appearance. A will or a person is not an epistemolog- 
ical subject, but an object which reflection shows us must 
have an independent worth. Therefore, we may say that 
it is not a subject but a subject object appearing to us 

50 



primarily as an object and secondarily as a subject. 
The full recognition of the subjective part or the inde- 
pendenl worth of Wills as distinct from Energies was in- 
troduced comparatively Late into human thought, through 
the command, kk Love thy neighbor as thyself." This 
means to feel the worth of your neighbor as you feel that 
of self. 

In giving an account of will we have had in mind what 
seemed to be the most common use. So widely used a 
word has many shades of meaning. Sometimes will 
power denotes intellectual concentration and is closely 
akin to memory. In fact, memory and a sense of worths 
are sufficient to give anyone will-power. 

Sometimes the will is differentiated from other energies 
by the phrase " final-cause," and at the same time an 
element of values is introduced. What actually happens 
in such cases is that a conception of a value is present as 
an efficient cause. The fact that the achievement is in 
the future does not justify any real distinction in a final 
cause. Final causes introduce confusion rather than 
clearness. The word cause or the phrase efficient cause is 
sufficient to cover the laws of relations of wills, and the 
worth element is already present in the conception. It 
cannot be introduced by any futurity. 

Freedom of Will. 

With the will as an object in the world of necessity, 
the question arises as to the freedom of the will. 

The universality of the laws of the object world attach 
to the same degree to the will which is an object. To 
reach the conception of contingency we must revert to 
what has been already said in regard to Universal s. Any 
law which we state as universally valid, is universally 
valid until we decide to modify the content of either the 
subject or the predicate. Dry |)owder touched by 
fire explodes, Ave say, because if it does not, it isn't 
powder. A single instance creates a law. Any object, 
powder for instance, is an abstraction quite as much as 
the law ; there is therefore nothing surprising in objects 

51 



or abstractions obeying abstract rules. New experiences 
produce new objects and call for new laws. In one sense 
laws control objects and have been valid from eternity, in 
another sense experience produces the laws. Here, then, 
we have given the world of unchangeable law, but in the 
increase of experience is introduced the element of con- 
tingency into the world because new laws are called into 
being. 

So in one sense the will is strictly determined by mo- 
tives. On the other hand, new states of consciousness and 
new worths introduce contingency. We can explain 
fairly well why we acted in the past, but not how we will 
act in the future. This is because an experience in the 
future, not yet become real, cannot be put into the cate- 
gories of subject and object, and therefore we do not know 
its law or its worth. The worth of the particular experience 
does not preceed that experience. Only after an exper- 
ience has come do we learn its worth. 

Worth as subject is therefore not a motive; motives 
are previous experiences where the experience as a whole 
is looked at as an object or concept by itself. This meets 
the contention that because the pleasure accompanies and 
does not precede the act, pleasure cannot be a motive. 

Spirit and Matter. 

The same reasoning which we used in regard to the will 
as an independent worth answers the query as to what 
becomes of the spirit with this entirely epistemological 
view of the subject. 

Our analysis enables us to give to the traditional dis- 
tinction between spirit and matter a meaning without 
introducing any such gulf as is usually implied. Matter 
being energy and all energy being thrown to the object 
side, a spirit is an energy in which I postulate, a jios- 
teriori, an independent worth or subject, independent 
because not depending on the relation to my subject. 
This is a confession that our knowledge of other selves is 
not immediate and a priori, but no more is my knowl- 
edge of myself. In fact all knowledge is the result of 

52 



analysis. It is a matter of opinion or of evidence just 
how far we arc to go in applying the term spirit to the 
energies which we meet. 

There is no strict line of demarcation to be drawn be- 
tween the spirit-sciences and the nature-sciences although 
they may be distinguished. The former take the worths 
into consideration, the latter as far as possible eliminate 
the worth element. History, for instance, may be taken 
up from either standpoint. The relative importance of the 
study of history from the standpoint of worths has, very 
naturally perhaps, been underestimated. The study of 
history from the scientific standpoint explains the past 
and to a small extent gives an insight into the future. It 
provides maxims. When we require counsel and leader- 
ship, however, he who has appreciated the worths in 
history, possesses that subtle prophetic power which 
seems like inspiration or intuition. The mere study of 
past relations and past causes produces incompetent di- 
rectors of affairs because circumstances are never the same. 
New rights are growing all the time. The control of af- 
fairs is to be entrusted to him who through his broad ap- 
preciation of worths is able to appreciate new worths be- 
fore enough is known about them for science to work out 
the laws of their relations. Very silly does the develop- 
ment of events make the advice seem of him w T ho has 
looked on history only externally, studying its laws but 
not pulsing with its heart. And how marvellous seems 
the intuition of him who has forefelt his fellow men. He 
becomes the Saviour. 

Ethical Laws. 

It is this fact of new worths which justifies the recog- 
nition of new rights, new ethical laws and the passing of 
old ones. The old rights and the old laws are as valid 
for the old circumstances as ever. They were and are 
universals, only that the laws of the sulphates do not 
apply to the paraphine series. If a thing is right once it 
must be for all time. New circumstances, however, bring 
into being new rights which supplant the old ones, 

53 



although they do not prove them wrong. In a sense, 
therefore, every age and country and every individual 
has new ethical laws according to the varation of worths. 
The varations are not different in kind nor very different 
in degree from the varations in the perception of the 
sense objects. 

One of the favorite arguments against the emphasis on 
values has been the lack of agreement introduced into 
ethics. There seems to be no basis for imparting 
conviction and certainty. In practice, however, it is 
hard to compel agreement as to whether a given ball is 
exactly spherical in shape. In the world of worths we 
have canons and rules that may be applied. The disagree- 
ment comes in deciding whether they apply to the given 
circumstances. Absolute truth has not been reached, nor 
absolute worth. The categorical imperative either in 
logic or ethics, gives only what I conceive to be right 
with hope for more light later. The parallel uses of the 
word right in its two meanings, ethical and logical, the 
one in line with the most worth and the other in line with 
the greatest truth, are not so very different. 

In the sphere of Ethics and of Practical philosophy in 
general, we stand on a better epistemological basis when 
we use as the characteristic word the word worth rather 
than the word ought. The distinction between the world 
that is and the world that ought to be has become quite 
current. Prof. Sidgwick's posthumous work, "Philosophy, 
its scope and relations, " is an attempt to win a place for 
a science of "what ought to be." The obvious answer 
to such an attempt is : " Everything 'that is, ought to be." 
In the appendix to Lecture 2 he confesses the failure to 
articulate the two. In giving his reasons for not treat- 
ing of the relations of philosophy to religion he says, 
" In the first place I may say that it was not due to any 
desire to depreciate the importance of theology or to 
leave it on one side. On the contrary, as I have tried to 
indicate, the fundamental question to which theology 
gives an answer — as to the relation of what is, to what 
ought to be — represents in my view the final and most 

54 



important task of philosophy- I was impressed with the 
difficulty either o\' separating it" (the common element 
of religions thought) kk from the historical element with 
which it is combined in current rationalistic theologies, 
or if I introduced it along with this historical element, 
of giving any statement of it that would claim to rank — 
in respect of consensus of experts — with the positive 
sciences. I by no means say that there should not be 
made a serious attempt to overcome this difficulty ; but 
I think it must be made in the first instance by theo- 
logians." 

After all, ethics and religion find no sufficient basis in 
will because no one ever did anything that he did not 
wish to do; nor in Kant's doing a thing against desire, 
for that is an impossibility ; nor in a categorical impera- 
tive, for this requires a further basing in the tempera- 
ment and personality; nor in the world that ought to be. 
" A science of ethics begins only when it is seen that 
men's actions are consciously directed towards or un- 
consciously terminate in some one of the several forms of 
"the Good." (Prof. Ladd, Phil, of Conduct, p. 41.) 

Mental and Physical. 

Furthermore our analysis does justice to the facts 
which gave rise to the dualism between the mental and 
the physical, without however introducing any onto- 
logical dualism. 



<u 




.& 




^ 








o 




** < 




r 




Subjective 



55 



LofC. 



Two senses in which the word mental is used must be 
here distinguished. First, in the logical sense, like 
intellect, set over against the experiences where feeling- 
enters in, it is used of concepts, and therefore is thrown 
further over to the object axis than is the physical. 

Second, as a result of an ontological dualism already 
carried out, where an inner workl is contrasted with an 
outer, the word mental is used for the former. Here it 
seems to correspond to psychic. As this brings it very 
close to the feelings the mental seems to be an extra 
layer, if we might so imagine it, laid on top of the 
physical in the illustration above, extending from the 
feelings to the concepts (compare page 35). This use of 
the word mental as characterizing an inner world set over 
against the outer world we must reject as leading to con- 
fusion. If it is used as synonymous with psychic or con- 
scious, covering the whole of experience but with special 
regard to the epistemolgical subject or worth of the 
experience, there is no objection save that this must be 
recognized as different from the conceptual world and 
must not lead us into the old dualism of cogitatio and 
extensio. 

If we take cogitatio as our starting point and reach as a 
conclusion "therefore I am," we have not given a basis for 
"it is." We are solipsists. If we wish to add this 
latter element we cannot retain the "being" element in 
either, and therefore out of " I think," our conclusion is 
" therefore I and it." The " being " element or element 
of existence calls for another antithesis, that of feeling 
and value. Accordingly from "I am thinking," "an 
existent and a value " is the conclusion. In the second 
antithesis the I and it also find a meaning, and the cor- 
rected syllogism would be, "I think therefore I as value 
and it as being." The existence of the ego is derived a 
posteriori and only a posteriori are we justified in identi- 
fying the ego represented by our body with the subject 
of the epistemological analysis. Probably the process is 
not very different from the way in which the eye is 
identified with our sensing of light. A fixed head with- 

56 



out the powers of motion would not know whether it saw 
with its eyes or its ears, and the question would never 
occur to it. 

The principal cleavage is not between the mental or 
psychic and the physical, but between the world of rela- 
tion and the world of value. Windelband's fundamental 
distinction between the idio-thetic and the nomo-thetic 
sciences comes to our minds here. 

Nominalism and Realism. 

All objectification is abstraction and all objective reality 
is also abstraction, so that a name differs from an object 
only in the extent to which the abstraction has been car- 
ried towards the object-axis. 



Object 



*' ./ 



rttf 



V 



Subject 



This is the same solution as that presented by concep- 
tualism, but there had always seemed to remain lurking 
a distinction between a concept and an object which was 
not accounted for. The concept stove is a real object, 
therefore real in the same way that the concept my 
kitchen stove is real. Every object stands apart by itself 
because of a process of abstraction and the general term 
is as objectively real as the particular. The concept my 
kitchen stove is likewise a universal as much as any gen- 

57 



eral idea and its relations will be always valid, the only 
question being whether any particular experience is to be 
brought under its category. 

The Classification of Sciences. 

The difficulties that have arisen in the classification of 
sciences have not been so much in the actual ordering of 
them as in the reasons for the ordering. Psychology and 
logic have presented the principal difficulties as to place. 

Our analysis overcomes the inherent contradiction in 
Spencer's system, where the whole progress was from ab- 
stract to concrete, while the progress in each science w r as 
from concrete to abstract, and it reconciles this system 
with the "hierarchy " of Comte's and the more cumber- 
some classifications of Wundt, Grasserie, and Trivero. 

Object 



! 



* V 



j> 



\ 



yy , . 



* *W • \> 






% % 

pleasure-pain art religion 

Subject 



value worth 



The classification is linear with the exception of phil- 
osophy and theology which from opposite directions ad 

58 



vance toward fche same anity. With our conception of 
objectivity. Logic finds its place among the objective 
sciences with mathematics, to which it can indeed be re- 
duced. For instance, trees -f- other plants = all plants; 
the poplar + other trees = all trees; hence the poplar + 
other trees + other plants = all plants. 

Sociology would be divided between anthropology, 
folk-psychology and ethics. Epistemology, used of a 
particular part oftentimes included in the word psychol- 
ogy, comes at the very point where experience is analyzed 
into truth and worth. 

In the diagram, the places assigned indicate rather the 
directions and the comparative places, than absolute 
places. Quality, for instance, continues with diminish- 
ing presence clear to the object axis. 

We reject the classification into Naturwissenschaften 
and Geistewissenschaften, because it has no epistemolog- 
ical basis and moreover leads to impossible juxtapositions 
and separations. Compare Wundt's Einleitung in die 
Philosophie. 

THE BEARING OF OUR ANALYSIS ON THE PROBLEMS 
OP RELIGION. 

An analysis can claim a right to attention in proportion 
to the number and range of the facts for which it provides 
an account. If we find our analysis into subject and 
object, into worth and truth, serving as a key for the 
solution of difficulties and contradictions, we shall be 
more certain that we are proceeeding along the right 
lines. Some of these problems which come up in phil- 
osophy we have spoken of. Although this paper makes 
its appeal to the philosophical reader, it may not be out 
of place to indicate the bearing of this analysis on some 
of the problems of religion. 

It articulates religion and philosophy and provides the 
former with an epistemological basis as firm as is that of 
the latter. 

59 



Similarly it furnishes a basis in psychology for the 
Ritschlian contentions in behalf of ?alue- judgments and 
frees them from the accusations of requiring- two kinds 
of truth. 

It provides a theoretical conception of God, one rea- 
soned out, which can be of influence in the practical world 
as well as in the theoretical world. 

Christianity becomes truly Christo-centric which no 
other psychological system has ever made it This is a 
matter of supreme importance to those who are interested 
in the betterment of Society. 

To make the appeal to men as children of worth will 
serve as a stepping stone to show them that they are 
children of God. The latter phrase by itself usually 
means very little. 

To realize one's self, one's own reality, has been identi- 
fied with becoming religious, and rightly because it is 
feeling one's worth as well as one's objective relations. 

Save where values are found in the elements of con- 
sciousness, attempts to bolster up the nobility of life 
must always seem weak. 

Religion becomes empirical, worked out by experience, 
dependent on experience, and not imposed from the out- 
side. It becomes positivistic. 

Oar analysis turns the attention of religion from the 
puzzles to the practical part. 

It justifies the use of the word faith, where faith means 
to feel the worth of. This has always been the real dis- 
tinction between faith and belief, belief referring to the 
intellectual apjjrehension. It is faith in Christ, the sense 
of the worth of him to my life and the life of those 
around me which propagates the Gospel. The belief his 
ojective relations is from the religious standpoint a sec- 
ondary consideration. To one who feels the worth, the 
moving of mountains becomes a possible thing. This in- 
terpretation of faith shows how it may be central in the 
same religion which takes love as its central principle, the 
basal idea in each word is, to feel the worth of. 

60 



A creed becomes a statement, not of whal one believes, 
1 mi t of what one values, and the latter is the true test of 
character. Tests ot creeds, like that given by Newman 
in his Grammar o( Assent, viz., "their vitality, their 
coherence and their friiitf illness,' ' become valid, and all 
similar defences of a religion from its effects receive a 
scientific justification; for instance, Balfour's ik need" 
as a justification for religious belief. It is in the same 
way that in experimentation it is the " need " which 
causes us, in order to account for certain phenomena, to 
postulate and to accept the reality of substances which 
no one has ever touched or tasted. With the need in- 
creases the reality. 

Moreover, the phenomena presented by the so-called 
psychology of religion are less perplexing. The religious 
sense increases with increased faculty for discriminating 
and feeling values. An emotional temperament accord- 
ingly is especially open to religious experiences. The 
objectifying tendency which naturally detracts from the 
intensity of the religions experience, often restores the 
intensity by the keener discrimination which it affords. 
The intellectual power of the mind is not the only 
measure of the power for experience, and it sometimes 
happens that meutal weakness may be accompanied by 
an exuberance of religious feeling. 

The questions which arise from the study of the his- 
tory of religions also fall into line. What seem to be in- 
dependent approaches to religion through poetic mythol- 
ogy, through selfish propitiation and through the in- 
creasing ethical sense have their common root in our dis- 
tinction between the subject and object. 

A miracle may then be defined as an evidence that there 
is a purpose in the universe. The supernatural is the 
personality, or independent worth, or the subject in the 
world. 

Pessimism is refuted at its very source, for, as a misan- 
thrope is one who has too high an estimate of man, so a 
pessimist has an idea of a value in existence not justified 
by the objective relations of experience. 

61 



CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY. 

I am conscious of the sketchy character of my treat- 
ment of our subject. Many of the difficulties that arose 
have not been satisfactorily met, and there are some dif- 
ficulties to which I have not even dared to refer. All 
that I venture to hope is that it is a step in the right di- 
rection. Even if I have not found the final place of values 
the treatment will not be in vain, provided it serves to 
cast a vote, as it were, by a show of hands, in behalf of a 
recognition by philosophy of worths. Perhaps some one 
better fitted and better able may be stimulated by the 
very failures to establish a more worthy place for values 
and to articulate better our every day life and wants, to 
the systems of thought. 

By way of summary, I will indicate what I consider 
the most important points of the essay : 

First, the attempt it makes to treat the subject of 
values psychologically. 

Second, the basis in psychology which it provides for 
Christianity. 

Third, the place it gives to value as a determining factor 
in reality. 

Fourth, the contribution it makes to psychology and 
epistemology. 

Fifth, the type of mathematical an}dysis adopted which 
fully rexu'esents both likeness and unlikeness, and keeps 
that which we are analyzing from appearing as a phe- 
nomenon made up of two reals. 

Sixth, the clear field it gives to truth. 

And seventh, the basis it affords for a classification of 
sciences. 



62 



AUG 27 1903 



